Self-monitoring is a concept introduced during the 1970's by Mark Snyder, that shows how much people monitor their self-presentations, expressive behavior, and nonverbal affective displays [1]. Human beings generally differ in substantial ways in their abilities and desires to engage in expressive controls (see dramaturgy).[2] It is defined as a personality trait that refers to an ability to regulate behavior to accommodate social situations. People concerned with their expressive self-presentation (see impression management) tend to closely monitor their audience in order to ensure appropriate or desired public appearances. Self-monitors try to understand how individuals and groups will perceive their actions. Some personality types commonly act spontaneously (low self-monitors) and others are more apt to purposely control and consciously adjust their behavior (high self-monitors).

During the 1970s when the self-monitoring concept was introduced it became part of two larger ongoing debates. Within personality research there was the tension between traits and situations. Were people more inclined to behave consistent with their personality traits or were they influenced by the immediate social situation? The self-monitoring construct offered a resolution to this debate because there was no need to argue that humans were influenced entirely by either traits or situations. High self-monitors were better predicted by their social environment (situation) while low self-monitors were better predicted by their traits. Another debate that was raging during this time period within social psychology was whether or not attitudes were good predictors of behavior.[3] The self-monitoring construct offered a resolution to this debate as well because it posited that low self-monitors would behave largely consistent with their attitudes, while attitudes would be poor predictors of behavior for high self-monitors. The self-monitoring construct fit neatly into the arguments of the day where high self-monitors affirmed the situation-oriented view typically associated with social psychology, while the low self-monitors affirmed the trait-oriented view typically associated with personality psychology.[4]

People who closely monitor themselves are categorized as high self-monitors and often behave in a manner that is highly responsive to social cues and their situational context. High self-monitors can be thought of as social pragmatists who project images in an attempt to impress others and receive positive feedback.

Conversely, low self-monitors do not participate, to the same degree, in expressive control and do not share similar concern for situational appropriateness. Low self-monitors tend to exhibit expressive controls congruent with their own internal states; i.e. beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions regardless of social circumstance. Low self-monitors are often less observant of social context and consider expressing a self-presentation dissimilar from their internal states as a falsehood and undesirable.[4] People who are unwilling to self-monitor and adjust their behavior accordingly are often aggressive, uncompromising, and insistent with others. This may make them more prone to condemnation, rejection, and the possible consequent feelings of anger, anxiety, guilt, low self-concept, isolation, and depression. Even the occasional indiscretion can make social situations very awkward, and could result in the loss of a friend, co-worker, client, or even job. Those who are willing to adjust their behavior will often find that others are more receptive, pleasant, and benevolent towards them.

Mark Snyder originally developed a scale to measure whether people were high or low self monitors in 1974 as a 25-item measure. In his original study he found that Stanford University students scored significantly higher on the scale than did psychiatric inpatients, but significantly lower than people in the acting profession. The scale was revised into an 18-item measure that is considered psychometrically superior to the original scale and has been used extensively in self-monitoring studies.[5] There has developed great debate over whether or not the self-monitoring scale is a unitary phenomenon. During the 1980s, factor analysis postulated that the self-monitoring scale was actually measuring several distinct dimensions. The three-factor solution was the most common and usually interpreted as Acting, Extraversion, and Other-Directedness (see willingness to communicate).[6][7][8] There has developed consensus about the multifactorial nature of the items on the self-monitoring scale; however, there remain differing interpretations about whether or not that jeopardizes the validity of the self-monitoring concept.[4]

It has been shown that there is a significant relation between an individual's performance at his job and his or her ability to change their self-presentation in order to most adapt to the situation. Self-monitoring was most important during early tenure.[9] This history of finding individual difference variables that relate to job performance has been unsuccessful.[10] Some of the reasons why it is difficult to use individual difference variables to predict job performance is because there is failure to consider contextual effects such as informational influence and pressures for conformity. Other difficulties are a result from attempting to use personality measures without having a good understanding of the nature of the job and the individual's development in the job. This results in the individual differences being assessed without fully understanding why they should affect job performance directly or how they may affect an individual's performance when you take into consideration increased job knowledge that an individual may gain through experience.[11]

One case that shows how success could be related to individual predispositions is in organizations where individuals hold boundary-spanning positions. Boundary spanners purpose is to filter and transfer information across organizational boundaries.[12] The individuals that are responsible for this transfer of information may be in a roles both inside and outside the organization. Therefore, they should be able to respond to social and informational stimuli, inside and outside the organization. The nature of this job makes it likely that an individual's performance in this role is likely to be influenced the degree to which that person can perceive, understand and adapt to different social situations as appropriate. I essence, an individual who is a high self-monitor would be better at responding to different social cues and hence be more equipped to transfer information effectively across organizational borders and consequently a higher performer.[9]

Over time, however, the competitive advantage that high self monitors have over low self monitors reduced as job knowledge increases through experience and poor performers leave boundary spanning roles.[2]

A score of 0–8 on Snyder's scale indicates low self-monitoring, while a score of 13–25 indicates high self-monitoring. Some traits of high self-monitors include readily and easily modifying their behavior in response to the demands of the situation, whereas low self-monitors care little about modifying their behavior in response to the situation and tend to maintain the same opinions and attitudes regardless of the situation.[13] High self-monitors find it much easier to modify their behavior based on the situation than low self-monitors do. High self-monitors would be more likely to change their beliefs and opinions depending on who they're talking to, while low self-monitors would tend to be consistent throughout all situations. This has been studied mainly in correspondence with relationships. Compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors will have more dating and sexual partners, are more interested in having sex with people they are not in love with, and are more likely to have had sex with someone only once, as well as be more likely to deceive potential romantic partners.[13] High self-monitors are more likely to choose a romantic partner who is attractive but unsociable, while low self-monitors are more likely to choose a partner who is unattractive but sociable.[14] High self-monitors are also more likely to take on leadership positions than low self-monitors.[15]

There is a strong connection between Self-Monitoring and Self Presentation, as it has been proved that people who are high Self-Monitoring have greater cognitive access to self-presentation related concepts than people who are low Self-Monitoring.[16] Through a 100 person experiment, it was found out that High-self monitors more quickly linked positive personality traits to themselves following exposure to impression-related words, proving high self-monitors possess a heightened capacity to cognitively process self-presentation information. High Self-Monitors rely on social information to guide their self-presentations since they vary their presentations based on different social cues. They are also, compared to low self-monitors, more likely to recall personal information about an upcoming interaction partner, are better able to judge emotional displays, are more skilled at decoding nonverbal behaviors, show better performance on interpersonal perception tasks, are more focused on their interaction partners, and they seek out and consider more information about an audience when trying to convey a particular identity.

Essentially, Tyler, Kearns and McIntyres' argue that high Self-Monitoring people are more likely to seek out social cues and information through interactions, following which they will employ this information in their behaviour, hence portraying a self presentation or image that they want to. Additionally, they are more sensitive to social cues and social information. People low in Self-Monitoring however, would behave as themselves in most cases and hence not have an option in the self-presentation that they project, as well as being less sensitive to social information present around them.

Gudykunst et al, (1987) argued that individualism should influence self-monitoring. Cultures high on individualism focus on the self, not others. In individualistic cultures, knowing the context is not necessary to predict others' behavior, thus people from individualistic cultures are more likely to be high self-monitors. Cultures low on individualism (i.e., collectivist cultures), in contrast, value conformity to ingroups and group memberships. In collectivistic cultures, knowing the context and social status of the other person is essential to predicting his or her behavior, thus people from collectivistic cultures are more likely to be low self-monitors.[17]

There are several theories within social psychology that are closely related to the self-monitoring construct. Icek Ajzen argues that subjective norms are an important antecedent to determining behavioral intention in the theory of reasoned action/theory of planned behavior.[18] High self-monitors tend to weigh subjective norms more heavily than low self-monitors. Studies that evaluate private attitudes and public actions include Ajzen, Timko & White, 1982; and DeBono & Omoto, 1993. Informational cascades theory is related to observation learning theory which was developed by Bikhchandani, S.; Hirshleifer, D. & Welch, I. (1992) and describes how people will follow, sometimes blindly, the actions of others. The self-monitoring construct would identify that high self-monitors may be more susceptible to informational cascades and herd mentality. This can be a problem if a culture of groupthink is part of the organizations decision making process. High self-monitors are more motivated to attain high social status than low self-monitors.[19] Research drawing on the elaboration likelihood model suggests that high self-monitors, more than low self-monitors, react favorably to peripheral processing of advertising images consistent with high social status.[20][21][22]

Self-monitoring is useful for students from preschool to adulthood and can be taught to individuals at a variety of levels of cognitive functioning. Self-monitoring interventions foster independent functioning, which allows individuals with disabilities to rely less on prompts from others (Koegel, Koegel, Harrower, & Carter, 1999). Self-monitoring interventions are among the most flexible, useful, and effective strategies for students with academic and behavioral difficulties (Mitchum, Young, West, & Benyo, 2001). They have demonstrated efficacy for targeting a range of academic abilities (Rock, 2005), self- help skills (Pierce & Schreibman, 1994), behavioral problems (Todd, Horner, & Sugai, 1999), and social behaviors (Strain & Kohler, 1994). Students with behavioral and academic difficulties typically have limited awareness and understanding of their own behavior and its effects on others. Self-monitoring interventions equip students to recognize and keep track of their own behavior (Hoff & DuPaul, 1998; Rhode, Morgan, & Young, 1983). Using these strategies, students can learn to identify and increase positive, pro-social behaviors, the behaviors necessary for success in general education settings. Self-monitoring strategies are individualized plans used to increase independent functioning in academic, behavioral, self-help, and social areas. Rather than focusing on reducing a student’s undesired behavior, self-monitoring strategies develop skills that lead to an increase in appropriate behavior. When self-monitoring skills increase, corresponding reductions in undesired behaviors often occur, even without direct intervention (Dunlap, Clarke, Jackson, Wright, 1995; Koegel, Koegel, Harrower, & Carter, 1999). This collateral behavior change allows teachers and parents to address multiple behaviors with one efficient intervention. The five steps involved in planning a self-monitoring intervention:

To fit seamlessly into a classroom, home, or work setting, self-monitoring interventions may be structured in a variety of ways. The design of the self-monitoring device is largely determined by the student’s needs and setting in which the intervention will occur. Checklists and charts are common materials used to record behavior.

Self-monitoring, despite all the research and theory behind it, has been shrouded with controversy and confusion with respect to its actual existence.[23] The initial confusion was caused because there was factor analyses conducted, revealing that the structure of most items of the Self-Monitoring Scale was multifactorial. There are three factors that appeared necessary to account for the correlations between the items for the measure, interpreted as Acting (e.g. "I would probably make a good actor"), Extraversion (e.g. "In a group of people, I am rarely the center of attention") and Other-Direcedness (e.g. "I guess I put on a show to entertain or impress other people") (Snyder, M. & Gangestad, S. (2000)). Though these factor analyses are used as instruments to measure the level of self monitoring, they have prompted the question of the existence of self-monitoring, that is, is it a real, unitary phenomenon. Mark Snyder and Steven W. Gangestad, (2000) argued through a series of quantitative experiments that it is indeed a real unitary phenomenon by showing that external criterion measures representing a wide array of phenomena relating to expressive control all point to self-monitoring as a real causal phenomena.

Additionally, they argue that the external criterion variables generally mark most directly tapped by the Self-Monitoring Scale rather than being tapped by the measures of Extraversion, Social Surgency, or Other-Directedness, meaning that Self-Monitoring can better describe the factors that contribute to a persons personality than the combination of these. Measures of these three factors relate to the self-monitoring criterion only with respect to the fact that they have similar variance with the self-monitoring dimension, with Other-Directedness being the most highly related to Self-Monitoring. Hence through answering these two questions, doubts regarding the existence of the Self-Monitoring phenomena were clearly dispelled.

Snyder, M., Berschedi, E., & Glick, P. (1985). Focusing on the exterior and the interior: Two Investigations of the initiation of personal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1427-1439

Snyder, M. & DeBono, K.G. (1985) Appeals to image and claims about quality: Understanding the psychology of advertising. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 586–97.